The Capitalist Revolution: Fifty Propositions About Prosperity, Equality,…

Berger takes the radical approach of being purely empirical, or as close as a human being can get to being purely empirical, without preconceived Grand Ideas like Marxism, etc. (Yes, all observation is theory-laden, but you know what I mean.)

In this spirit he puts forth 50 propositions about capitalism, based on the record. E.g., "Capitalism is a necessary but not sufficient condition of democracy."

The radical aspect of Berger's approach is that he intends these to be scientific propositions in the sense that the evidence can confirm or refute them (*). They are not, and he is very emphatic about this, a priori deductions from first principles which are forever insulated from evidence.

On balance this is a pro-capitalist work. The implicit invitation to those who wish to take issue with it is that they should do so in light of actual evidence.

* Or, more accurately, can influence our subjective probabilities of the propositions being true, for you Bayesian learners out there. ( )